PaperBox Books

Last night I was introduced to 750words a site for writers to get the juices flowing

The idea is to write 750 words every day and you’ll find the rest of the writing easier. You can write whatever you want, it doesn’t need to be a story or a scene.

When you write you graduate through the process of egg to turkey to penguin to … well you need to earn the points to get there. The fun thing is that you get all kinds of statistics and analysis of your writing.

I recommend you try it out, what the heck it’s a tool and we all have those days when we can’t seem to get going.

Perry

Don’t forget the great pricing contest $2.99 romantic fantasy or $6.99 dual version of a paranormal fantasy.

No Comments | In: Awesome Links | tags: books for sale, Process, writing, Writing Tips. | #

I’ve learned in the process of getting a manuscript ready for submission that two things are true.

1. it’s never perfect but you need to get as close as possible
2. there will be changes when the editor reads your story

Getting close to perfect involves sharing and listening. First, when you have revised it a couple of time, it’s ready for critiquing. There are a number of ways to get a critique. Posting on-line to a writing and reading community. Finding an in-person writing group and inviting 4 or 5 people into a writing circle.

Writing circles generally share specific numbers of pages on a regular schedule. You provide and you get advice on structural issues, character development and description – the bigger items. A critique group can agree to do line editing so it’s important to understand the guidelines of the group. When you get critiques the rule is that you don’t argue – you can decide you don’t agree, but it’s not cool to try to bring people to your point of view – you are there to find things you can’t see in your writing.

Online groups can be useful if you keep in mind that you don’t know who will critique. There are lots of site out there, Sue posted some earlier today. My favorite is Authonomy a Harper Collins site. Your work needs to be at least 10,000 words to make public but once it is, people will give you comments and ask you to give them comments back. What makes this community great is that you get comments from readers and writers. You need to develop a professional attitude here, that’s a good thing, you’ll be a better author for it.

The key to success for critiquing – online or reality – is to participate. You give as much as you expect to get – and more.

Happy writing

Perry

No Comments | In: Submissions, Writing Tips | tags: How to Submit, Process, Writing Tips. | #

What’s up with us right now?

We’re reviewing some great submissions and continuing to stalk the premium distributors for our books.

In between that we’re designing a 6 week revision online workshop. We are not ready to launch yet, but we’re working on the curriculum. Participants will learn a process for revising their stories from a big structural check through to polishing the pre-submission draft. Including some ideas on how to deal with critiquing, how to decide what you will change and how to approach changes. Along with how to deal with conflicting critiques.

Along with tools and lessons, each participant will receive at least 2 separate critiques on a few scenes of their work.

We’re having fun creating it from our own experiences in figuring out how to get from the first draft to the polished manuscript.

Stay tuned over the next month or so while we get the course set up and tested.

Perry

No Comments | In: What's New with PBB | tags: Process, Writing Tips. | #

This might be the 500,000,000th or more posting on this subject. When submitting your work to an agent or publisher, you want to make the best impression.

That doesn’t mean your book needs to be publishing ready. There are people in the process who will help you take your best work and make it excellent, fabulous, and readworthy.

It doesn’t seem to matter whether the economy is booming or busting, there are always more books written than can possibly fit on a book shelf. That’s why it’s so hard to break into publishing. Well, e-publishing is no different. No matter how easy it is to get your book out there, you need to think of your reader – they want the best stories presented to them in the most professional way possible.

So, when you submit to a publisher or agent you need to start with your best. Your best includes making sure you’ve run the spell, grammar, and style checker on your word processor. It includes making sure your characters come alive and your story has a beginning, middle and end.

How do you get there? I’ve found the best way to get from first draft to publishable work is revise the first draft a couple of times and then get a critique. Critique groups give you two important things.

First, your critique group is made of writers, they know what the process is. They know what structure is, they know when the passion is on the page. A good critique group will challenge you on everything about your story – and they’ll find thing you can’t see. My experience with critique groups has been great – I see my mistakes in other people’s books. After reviewing another writer’s work, I go and look for the same things in my own.

Second, and perhaps more important, a critique group will get you used to critiques. You’ll hear things you don’t agree with and you’ll get great ideas. The feedback from your critique group is not intended to be gospel. You can decide what you want to do with the comments. But, I bet you’ll find that when you don’t agree, it’s not because your writing was so great and the reader didn’t ‘get’ it, it will be because you weren’t clear enough in the first place.

When you’ve worked with a critique group and thoughtfully revised your manuscript, it’s time to check submission requirements. And check them carefully, they aren’t there to create a barrier, they are there to make it easy for the editor/agent to access your work. Keep in mind the person reading your submission is reading multiple works, make it easy for them.

Wow,is the rant over? Yep, only one thing left. When you think you’ve sent in your best work, don’t be surprised if you get back a long list of suggestions. If the person reading your submission has gone to the trouble of giving you feedback, it means they read the work and they care enough to help.

Write well and prosper.

Perry

2 Comments | In: Submissions | tags: How to Submit, opinion, Process, Writing Tips. | #

If you have followed us on Twitter, you’ll know the big news. Our first books are up and available to buy on Smashwords.

Here are the links if you haven’t heard.

The Problem with Jake

Off Track

The Trouble with Jake

Dual Version of  the Jake and Kathryn

Now we wait for the process to flow through to the Kindle store, the Sony ebook store and Fictionwise and all the other great e-book retailers out there.  The great news is we did a fabulous formatting job so we qualified for the premium catalogue – important for our authors to know we are able to produce high quality ebooks.

I thought the waiting over Christmas would drive me nuts – waiting to get the components together, waiting to make sure the formatting was clean. I didn’t think ahead to how it feels stalking Amazon.com and the Sony store to see when our titles pop up.

Well, I can live with the anticipation.

Time to get going on other people’s books and helping other authors find their audience.

Have a great new years celebration – drink all you want – leave the car keys at home.

No Comments | In: What's New with PBB | tags: books for sale, Process, publishing. | #